Mizzou athletics operated at surplus in 2015-16

Friday

Jan 27, 2017 at 12:01 AM

By Blake ToppmeyerColumbia Daily Tribune

The Missouri athletic department’s revenue reached a record level during the 2015-16 fiscal year thanks to a soaring media-rights payout of $33.5 million, but MU’s expenses also increased to a record high, and its ticket sales revenue decreased.

Missouri brought in $97.28 million in revenue from July 1, 2015, through June 30, 2016, according to its annual revenue and expense report prepared for the NCAA, obtained Tuesday by the Tribune via an open-records request. The athletic department’s expenses during the fiscal period totaled $94.32 million.

Missouri operated at a surplus of $2.95 million, down from $4.36 million in the previous fiscal year. The Tigers ran in the black for the fourth straight year.

In the previous fiscal cycle, Missouri claimed $91.2 million in revenue and $86.9 million in expenses. This fiscal cycle represented a 6.6 percent increase in revenue and 8.6 percent increase in expense.

MU saw an increase of more than $7 million in media-rights payout, going from $26.4 in revenue in the previous fiscal cycle to $33.5 in 2016, an increase of 26.9 percent. Media-rights payout, NCAA distributions and Southeastern Conference distributions combined for $43.18 million of MU’s overall revenue, up from $36.87 million in the previous cycle.

Meanwhile, ticket sales revenue declined 18.3 percent, going from $23.4 million to 19.1 million. In the 2014-15 fiscal year, the Missouri football team won its second straight Southeastern Conference East Division title. In the 2015-16 fiscal year, the Tigers went 5-7. Additionally, the basketball program continued to flounder. Missouri went 10-21 in 2015-16 in the second year of Kim Anderson’s tenure after going 9-23 the previous year. The basketball program hasn’t turned it around this year, with a 5-13 mark through 18 games.

Specifically, the football program saw a $3 million decrease in ticket sales in the final year of the Gary Pinkel era, going from $16.3 million in revenue for the previous cycle compared to $13.3 million for this fiscal cycle. MU basketball ticket sales revenue dropped from $4.7 million in 2014-15 to $3.7 million in 2015-16.

Although revenue figures for the 2016 football season aren’t yet available, attendance figures don’t paint a promising picture. Missouri averaged 52,236 fans for its seven home football games in 2016, a nearly 20-percent drop from 2015 and its lowest average home attendance figure of this millennium. The largest turnout at Memorial Stadium, which has a capacity of 71,168, was the crowd of 57,098 for the Tigers’ Sept. 17 game against Georgia.

Power 5 schools began paying total cost of attendance to scholarship athletes in the 2015-16 fiscal year, and MU’s cost for student aid increased from $9.38 million to $11.25 million, an increase of 19.9 percent. Additionally, Missouri spent $841,697 in non-travel student meals in this cycle.

Missouri’s revenues increased from 2014-15 to 2015-16 in every category except ticket sales. Expenses also increased in most categories.